Monday, 29 February 2016

Ethical Guidelines Related to Mental Health Care

For the record...
Mental health professionals need to be certified or licensed to practice in a given country according to that country’s professional regulations (Fraser, 2009b; Pope & Vasquez, 2011). Professionals must adhere to the ethical codes of their professional licensing or certifying organizations in all of their work with trans- sexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming clients.
Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and lived gender expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), yet without success, particularly in the long-term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly, 1965).

Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.
If mental health professionals are uncomfortable with, or inexperienced in, working with transsexual, transgender, and gender- nonconforming individuals and their families, they should refer clients to a competent provider or, at minimum, consult with an expert peer. If no local practitioners are available, consultation may be done via telehealth methods, assuming local requirements for distance consultation are met.
 From the WPATH Standards of Care v7(PDF)

1 comment:

Paula said...

This should be common knowledge throughout the "Western World" as a minimum, unfortunately it seems that some still need to be reminded